Determination of the Priorities of Customer Requirements and Quality in Apparel Retail Industry
Canan Saricam, Asli Aksoy, Fatma Kalaoglu

Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to explore and evaluate the priorities of customer requirements and importance of quality in apparel retailing industry within the consumer perspective and to show the usability of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) in ranking of the requirements. The requirements of the final customers from the apparel retail companies are determined in a hierarchical manner consisting of two levels. The first level of requirements includes, quality referring to ‘Performance and durability’, ‘Price’, ‘Timeliness or flexibility’, ‘Fashion, design and variety’, and ‘Service’ referring the customer requirements regarding the store activity, whereas the second of level criteria includes the specific requirements of the customer within each requirements in the first level. The data for analysis is obtained from the focus group of consumers. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is employed for making pair-wise comparison in order to provide a quantitative ranking of the requirements and generate the priorities. The quality and their components are positioned at the top among the other prior requirements of the consumers. Determination of relative importance of the quality and other requirements helps the companies to establish the specifications and price configuration of their product range in convenience with the expectations of the consumers.

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